On the Home Front
by AstroGirl
Summary: After 'Boom Town,' Mickey Smith meets an old friend of the Doctor's.


**On the Home Front**  
**by AstroGirl**

He'd meant to get on a train, leave, and never look back. But somehow he'd never made it to the station. Instead he'd spent the night walking the streets of Cardiff, thinking about... well, everything, really, in a big jumbled mess that had got him absolutely nowhere. And now, without meaning to, he'd ended up back here.

The TARDIS was gone. There was nothing here any more but that stupid fountain, nothing but the cracks in the pavement left to indicate that anything had happened last night at all. 

He wondered what exactly _had_ happened. Not that it really mattered. Whatever it was, they'd obviously sorted it perfectly well without him. Must've fixed up whatever it was, dealt with Margaret the Slitheen to everybody's satisfaction, and gone tripping merrily on to their next big adventure. Because wasn't that what they did? Wasn't that what Rose's life was like now?

He'd been an idiot to think he could compete with that. Or, let's face it, with _them_. The Doctor was bad enough. He had the sexy time machine, sure, but he also had big ears and a goofy face and was just kind of, well, weird. But that Jack guy, with his disgusting good looks, and his funny stories and that whole American action-hero thing he had going on? There _was_ no competing with guys like that. And just because Mickey wasn't going to waste his time trying, that didn't make him a coward. Right?

"Leave it alone," he said, irrationally hoping that if he said it out loud he'd be more likely to actually listen this time. "Just let her go. Leave it _alone_."

Yeah. This time, it really was the end. This time, he'd really had enough. He'd go home, ring up Tricia, go to a film... He'd get on with his life, and just try to accept the fact that she was--

"Gone, are they?" said a sudden voice at his elbow.

Mickey jumped and whirled around, half expecting to see some kind of alien monster, but it was just an old guy, smiling pleasantly. "Wha--?" That didn't quite come out as an entire word, so he tried again. "Who's gone?"

"The Doctor, of course." The man sighed. "I came as soon as I got word. Blue box surrounded by a strange column of light in the middle of an unnatural earthquake... Rather obvious, really." He sighed a little. "He always did have a habit of disappearing just when you'd want to talk to him."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Mickey said, the lie sounding unconvincing and lame in his own ears.

"It's all right," said the man. "I'm a friend. A very old friend." Okay, that was a scary thought, too. Hey, maybe he _was_ an alien, after all. You might expect something like that from an old friend of the Doctor's. "You're Mickey Smith," the man -- if that's what he was -- continued. It didn't really sound like a question.

Mickey took a half-step back, fighting off a little spike of panic. "How do you know that?"

The man smiled. It wasn't a creepy, thinking-abut-eating-you smile, but Mickey's muscles tensed anyway, preparing to run just in case he started unzipping his forehead or something. "Believe it or not, you're quite famous in certain quarters. Breaking into the UNIT computers--"

"I had help with that," said Mickey quickly.

"I'd guessed as much," said the man dryly. Mickey wondered if he ought to feel insulted. "Still you _were_ the one who blew up Downing Street."

"Look, there was a reason for that..."

"No, no, no." The man waved a hand dismissively. "I'm not blaming you. Alien invasion. Had to be done. Believe me, I understand how it goes." His expression hardened a little. "We lost a lot of good people to those Slitheen devils. It would have been worth blowing up a lot more than Downing Street to get rid of them." He shook his head. "Still, one could have hoped for a solution that was a little less... messy. I'd blame the Doctor's influence for that."

Well, it certainly _sounded_ like he knew the Doctor. And what had he said? _We_ lost people...? Mickey took a longer, calmer look at him. There was something in the way he talked, the way he moved, Mickey decided, that spelled "soldier," clear as anything. He knew the type well enough; they got them round the garage all the time. Old army blokes who, no matter how long they'd been retired, still looked as if they ought to be wearing a uniform, and probably still were, somewhere in their own minds. "I know what you are!" he exclaimed. "You're UNIT, aren't you? That's how you know the Doctor." He felt very proud of this deduction. _See, Mr. Army Man? You're not the only one who knows things!_

"Yes, well done." The man stuck out his hand. "Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart," he said. "Retired."

Mickey shook his hand, trying, pretty much unsuccessfully, to match the strength of his grip. "Hi."

An awkward silence fell between them, and the Brigadier's gaze eventually wandered back to the empty spot where the TARDIS wasn't.

"So, did you travel with him?" Mickey said finally.

The Brigadier looked at him in surprise. "Good heavens, no. Lot of nonsense, if you ask me, gallivanting around the universe. Besides, there was more than enough to be done here at home. It seemed as if we had an alien invasion a week, in the old days."

"He asked me to go with him," said Mickey. It felt weirdly like a confession. "I told him no. I was too scared. Too much of a coward to go and fight the monsters."

"Odd," said the Brigadier. "And here I thought you were the same Mickey Smith who'd fought off a hostile extraterrestrial using... What was it? A bottle of vinegar? Seems fairly brave to me."

"That was different. It came to my flat! It was gonna kill me. I didn't have a whole lot of options."

"Mmm. Sounds a bit like how I spent most of my career. Desperately fighting off monsters that had come to my home intending violence. In my case, it was a planet instead of a flat, but I believe the principle is the same." His eyes twinkled a little. "I do hope you're not calling _me_ a coward, Mr. Smith."

"Nah, I'd never say that to someone who's probably trained in, like, a hundred ways to kill people." Not that the man really _looked_ very dangerous. He was sort of old and out of shape, after all. But Mickey'd spent enough time looking up info on UNIT to believe him about fighting off the alien invasions. You didn't want to mess with someone like that.

"Smart lad." He gave Mickey a small smile. "You know, it seems to me that half the trouble with the world today -- possibly the entire galaxy, if the Doctor is any example -- is that too many people think courage is about going out and looking for trouble. I've always thought that courage has a great deal more to do with how you behave when trouble comes looking for _you_."

Mickey thought about that one for a while. "D'you miss it?" he said at last. "All the fighting off aliens or whatever. Was it, I dunno, _fun_? Do you miss it?"

"I suppose I do," said the Brigadier slowly. "I wouldn't like to let my wife hear me say so, but yes... Sometimes I do." He gave Mickey a considering look. "It's good to _do_ something with your life. To be able to say, when you're getting on in years: 'I was _there_. I had a purpose. I served.' I could have taken a job behind a desk, you know. I suppose it's possible the planet might well be a radioactive ruin or something if I had. Odd thought, that. But it's something to be proud of." He smiled. "And, yes, I did enjoy it. At times."

Mickey nodded. "I might go with him," he said, the words blurting out from nowhere. Well, no, not quite nowhere. The thought had been pushing against the back of his mind all night, he realized, desperately trying to get out.

"Excuse me?" said the Brigadier, slowly coming back from wherever his thoughts had gone.

"I might go," Mickey said. "Sometime. I might go with him. You know, just once. Just to see what it's like. Not..." His mind was working a mile a minute, and he was dimly aware that he was babbling, but he didn't care. "Not for Rose. 'Cause... 'cause I can't do it for Rose, you know? I tried, and I couldn't. And I felt terrible. Because when you love somebody, you're suppose to follow them anywhere, right? But, but..." He stuttered to a halt, having run out of words before he'd quite come to the heart of what he was trying to say.

The Brigadier shook his head. "In my opinion, it's a bad mistake to go changing your way of life for a woman. My Doris tried for years to tempt me into matrimony, but I didn't say 'yes' until I actually felt ready to settle down and raise begonias. Worked out much better for the both of us, I have absolutely no doubt of it."

"Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean! I can't change who I am for Rose. I can't be--" He thought of Jack again, white teeth flashing in a Hollywood grin. "--Captain America, or whatever. I should just do what I wanna do, for me. Stop worrying about what she's gonna think. Whether I'll make a fool out of myself in front of her, the way I did..." He remembered cowering and babbling, paralyzed with fear of the Autons while she got on with saving the world, and for a moment his face felt hot. "The way I did before. You know what? Who cares what she thinks!"

"That's the spirit!" Mickey scarcely heard the Brigadier's approving response, caught up as he was in his moment of personal revelation.

"If I'm scared, great, fine. I'm allowed to be scared. It's, like, _sane_ to be scared when aliens are trying to kill you. If I wanna be normal and stay home and go down the pub with my mates and drink and watch football, there's nothing wrong with that. And if someday, I want to go see for myself, want to say, 'Oi, Rose, move over, I'm coming this trip,' well, then, I can do that too can't I? Not for her. For _me_." He stood there grinning for a moment, awash in a strange new feeling of freedom. Then he looked over at the Brigadier, who was smiling quietly at him, and felt a bit embarrassed at his emotional outburst. "Uh... sorry. I got a bit carried away."

"No, no, quite all right," said the Brigadier, waving the apology away. He looked once again to the place where the TARDIS had stood last night, and his voice grew a little quieter "Sounds like a fine philosophy to me. And if you do see him... _When_ you see him, tell him the Brigadier says hello, will you? Tell him he might come and visit sometime, if he likes."

"Yeah, okay."

The Brigadier looked back towards Mickey, a strange soft expression transforming his face. "Who knows?" he said. "Maybe one of these days, just once... I'll come along, too. Begonias do get boring after a while."


End file.
